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20 years ago, security was relatively simple: do a virus-scan on your floppy disk before you insert it. Today, with everything from embedded systems to IP phones connected to one another, it’s more complicated. Here are six security problems that should be on every CIO’s radar screen.

By Greg Meckbach,
Editor, Network World Canada

Malicious Portable Document Format files

Adobe Systems Inc. has been a favourite target of hackers due to the popularity of its free Portable Document Format (PDF) reader. The latest vulnerability allows hackers to exploit a dynamic link library in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows and the current version of Adobe Acrobat. In September, Microsoft published a work-around with Enhanced Migration Experience Toolkit but users still need to handle PDF files, especially those received from unknown third parties, with caution.

Locking down servers is not as easy when applications move among servers using virtual machines. There are ways of making virtualization secure, but at the recent VMWorld conference, an engineer with BeyondTrust Software Inc. claimed hackers can manipulate the service console of VMware Inc.’s ESX virtualization product. This means they could steal virtual machine disk files and erase log files.